


Whisper

by staticbees



Series: Failure AU [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: AO3 formatting is going to be the death of me someday i swear, Gen, Run-On Sentences, apparently I like making my favorite characters suffer, but don't worry, it works out in the end, kind of, part of the Failure AU, weird spacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 22:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8508700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staticbees/pseuds/staticbees
Summary: Tex laughed in bitter realization. Of course. She was failure. All the AI fragments had traits, and even though she was herself, had her own personality, her trait was failure, and it wouldn’t let her rest, because disappearing, fading away, was winning and it couldn’t let her do that, couldn’t let her have the peace she wanted.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A little fic I thought up. It's part of the Failure AU series, which I'll add to as time goes on. There might be gaps between updates, but there'll probably be some plot progression in the series. I might wait until S15 for that, though. Anyway, hope you guys like it! ((I haven't posted on AO3 in so long ahaha)) Also I used song lyrics from Fragments, by Jeff Williams. So, that happened.

_No matter what she's doing, or what she's trying to accomplish, just when her goal is within her reach, it gets yanked away. Every. Single. Time._

 

_. . ._

_No Tex, no, I'm not gonna say I love you. …I’m gonna say I forget you.  
I forget you. I'm letting you go._

 

Tex felt herself fade, relaxing into the endless void of code that surrounded her. She fell into the comforting embrace of darkness, a faint sigh escaping her lips. _She was finally free._

  

Just as she was floating away, she felt a razor sharp tug, like a wire, pulling her back together. A burning sensation spread through her, and although she rationalized that what she was feeling was not pain, could not be pain, she knew it was. She reached out, trying to figure out what was holding her back, but there was nothing there. Nothing preventing Tex from leaving this world forever, but herself. She shuddered, desperately trying to break free.

 

Tex laughed in bitter realization. _Of course._ She was failure. All the AI fragments had traits, and even though she was herself, had her own personality, her trait was failure, and it wouldn’t let her rest, because disappearing, fading away, was winning and it couldn’t let her do that, couldn’t let her have the peace she wanted.

 

 

 _No, no, stop! Stop it, leave me here!_ Church’s voice was muffled, like Tex was underwater. There was a faint flash of light, and the unit went dark, the code breaking apart like dust, turning back into the sea of possibilities it had been when he had entered it. She felt the world dissolve, the thin facsimile of Blood Gulch fading back into lines of code.

 

 

 _Please,_ she whispered. She didn’t usually whisper. She didn’t usually say please, either. _Definitely something Church would’ve pointed out,_ she noted, with the barest wisp of a laugh, although she knew Church was gone, although she knew no one would hear her cry. _Let me go!_

 

 

She paused, feeling the tendrils of code shift. _Is someone there?_

 

Tex reached her hand out, feeling the rough pits and edges of tree bark under her fingertips. She shuddered, memories flooding back.

 

 

_The tree was tall, a gnarled oak with branches like fingers, reaching up towards the sky. It had stood in front of their house for as long as she could remember, roots clutching the ground, solid and sturdy._

_When they had first moved there, she had sat under the tree for hours, reading. In the summer it was a refuge, casting a cool shadow above the yard, and in the winter it was perfect for snowball fights. She had hung a tire swing on the tree when Carolina was five, and it lasted for years, only coming loose after a huge storm the night before._

 

 

She didn’t have all of Allison’s memories, just snippets and pieces, gathered from her data banks, from Church, from scents and tastes and feelings.

 

But she had this, and that’s what mattered. Because this meant she could control the simulations, just like Church had done. She could create a whole new world around her, full of people and places and _things._ It didn’t mean she wanted to be alive anymore than she did before, but at least this made living a little more bearable.

 

She closed her eyes, back against the tree, and sighed.

 

— — —

 

She wasn’t sure how it had been. How long she had been _here._ It was hard to keep track of the days in an AI storage unit, and the way she experienced time probably wasn’t synced with the outside world.

 

The outside world. What a funny title, like she was in some sort of other dimension, some ‘inside world’. Honestly, maybe she was. She wasn’t exactly sure anymore.

 

For all she knew, five minutes could’ve passed outside, or maybe years and years and Church and Tucker and Caboose and everyone she knew was already dead and gone.

 

She hopped from place to place, never staying long enough, never leaving soon enough. Every new world brought new memories and dredged up old ones.

 

She never saw Church. It was a purposeful thing, of course- even though she was part of him, even though he had brought her back, seeing him here wouldn’t be the same. It would feel... faked. He was the only one she really knew.

 

Maybe Carolina too, but… there was a disconnect there, almost like even though she had Allison’s memories, it didn’t feel like they were her own. It felt like they were someone else’s, a remnant from a happier time.

 

She tried not to waste time thinking about what might be, what could’ve been. She hadn’t been allowed to die, and now she was going to damned well make sure she was allowed to live. After all, if you have to live the rest of your life in a memory, you might as well make it a good one.


End file.
